For
thousands of years wise people have pondered why we suffer so much misery.
That misery we bring on ourselves or inflict on others they called "sin."
Some sins seemed to be more miserable than others. These they called "deadly
sins." In the 6th Century St. Gregory the Great listed
them as seven. In the 13th century Thomas Aquinas noted that
they were deadly not merely because they were serious offences morally
but because they gave rise to other sins.

Standing
first in line is Pride — the mother of all sins. Pride was the original
sin of Satan who "did not stay within the bounds of (his) proper
authority" (Jude 6). It was the sin of Lucifer who said: ‘I will
ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God… I will
make myself like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:13-14).

Pride
is the sin we most despise in others and least observe in ourselves. When
Johnny Carson introduced Howard Cosell on the Tonight Show, he said, "Here's
Howard Cosell, a legend in his own mind." There's a little Cosell
in each of us. In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis calls this the
"Great Sin" and devotes an entire chapter to it.

I've
heard people confess sins of drunkenness, adultery, theft, and even a
bad temper, but never the sin of pride. Not that we don't have it or hate
it: the more we have it in ourselves, the more we hate it in others. It
is thoroughly detested not by the humble but by the proud. The proud hate
pride in others. Peter wrote, "All of you must put on the apron of
humility, to serve one another; for the scripture says, 'God resists the
proud, but shows favor to the humble.' Humble yourselves, then, under
God's mighty hand, so that he will lift you up in his own good time"
(1 Peter 5:5-6 TEV).

GOD
RESISTS THE PROUD AND FAVORS THE HUMBLE

Peter
quotes Proverbs 3:34 to make the point that proud people have a problem
with God. God resists them because they resist him. That becomes obvious
if we remember what pride is. There is much confusion and misunderstanding
about pride. Some we like. And some we dislike. To begin with, consider
what pride is not. Pride is not taking pleasure in being praised.
A child who makes the honor roll, a woman complimented on her beauty,
a saved soul to whom Christ says, "Well done!" (Matthew 25:21) are
pleased. And they should be. Their pleasure, of course, should never be
that their achievement can be worn like a merit badge to impress others,
but that they pleased someone they rightly wanted to please.

Secondly,
pride is not the admiration you feel for the achievements of your friends
and family. The parent who says, "I'm proud of my children"
is not confessing a sin! I hope you are proud of your children and that
you let them know it. On the other hand, to be proud of your ancestry
may be sinful — and it certainly is sinful if it means disdaining the
ancestry of others. A Christian snob was boasting to her Jewish neighbor
that one of her forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence. "That's
nice," her neighbor replied, "One of mine wrote the ten commandments!"

Lecturing
his daughter about snobbishness a father said, "Remember we are all
from the same mold."

"That
may be," the daughter admitted, "but some are moldier than others."

"Never
ask anyone if they're from Texas," a Texan admonished his child.
"If they are, they'll tell you. And if they aren't, you don't want
to embarrass them." Pride of race and pride of place is okay as long
as it is appreciation of the achievements and worth of family and friends.
But the moment it cheapens the worth of others it becomes sin.

Thirdly,
pride is not satisfaction in a job well done. In order to do good
you have to do well. It is no sin to feel good when you have done your
best.

What,
then, is pride? Pride is putting self ahead of God at your soul's center
of gravity. To do that throws the whole thing off balance. What happens
to your soul is like what happens to your automatic washing machine in
dry cycle when all the clothes get clumped on one side: you're going to
shake to pieces.

Pride
insists, "My will be done," until God finally says to the damned,
"Have it your way." The thing that burns in hell is self-will.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" not because
they are lightly held and weakly abandoned, but because they are stubbornly
pursued until they become self-serving ends in themselves and are deified.
The prophet Amos asks, "Can horses run on rocks? Can oxen plow the
sea? Stupid even to ask, but no more stupid than what you do when you
make a mockery of justice and corrupt and sour all that should be good
and right. And just as stupid is your rejoicing in how great you are,
when you are less than nothing! And priding yourselves on your own tiny
power! (Amos 6:12-13 LB)

A
man took a dream tour of heaven and hell. In both places the people had
long spoons strapped to their arms so that they couldn't bend their elbows.
In hell the people were starving because they couldn't reach their mouths.
In heaven they were feeding each other.

In
this cold world there are two kinds of people: those who buy fur coats
and those who buy firewood: those who warm themselves and those who warm
others. In the world to come the proud will take no comfort in their selfish
furs.

Pride
is the most spiritual sin. Sin can be spiritual as well as physical. Lust,
gluttony and anger appeal to your physical nature. Pride appeals to your
spiritual nature. It corrupts every virtue into a festering vice. Whatever
virtues have graced your life can be ruined by pride. God isn’t out to
hurt your pride, my friend, he is out to kill it.

Pride
is the sin that kept Moses from entering the promised land (Numbers 20:10-12)
and it is what keeps you from being saved. God offers you salvation as
a free gift. "By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast"
(Ephesians 2:8-9).
But you don't want salvation God's way. You would rather be saved by your
works so you’ll have something to brag about. You don't like to think
of yourself as a charity case: getting something for nothing. But the
Bible says that's the only way anybody can be saved (Titus 3:5).

Pride
is competitive. We often say that people are proud of being rich or clever
or good looking, but they are not. What they are proud of is being richer
or cleverer or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally
rich, clever or good looking, they would have nothing to be proud of.
The proud get no pleasure from having anything, but only in having more
than others.

God
resists the proud and favors the humble because the humble rest under
God's mighty hand. Just as we misunderstand pride, so we misunderstand
humility. When my wife is distressed about her appearance, I can get a
rise out of her by saying, "That's all right, Dear. You look humble!"
How many of you want to look humble? How many of you know what humility
looks like? Would you recognize it if you saw it?

Humility
is not self-hate. Self-haters are probably the proudest people we know.
They hide behind great walls of arrogance to keep us from seeing how cheap
they feel inside. When I was a kid, I heard someone say of a proud person,
"I wish I could buy him for what he is worth and sell him for what
he thinks he is worth." An even better deal would be to buy him for
what he feels he is worth inside and sell him for what he pretends he
is worth. Pride makes people inflate their own value to compensate for
feelings of worthlessness.

Humility
is self-forgetfulness. It is not a low opinion of
yourself; it is no opinion of yourself. It is not pretty women trying
to believe they are ugly, or clever people trying to believe they are
fools. What nonsense! Truly humble people are not slimy individuals always
talking about how terrible they are. They are unaware of their own humility
because their attention is not on themselves, but on you.
They are interested in what you think and feel and do. They are the most
delightful people to be around. "Humble yourselves, then, under God's
mighty hand so that… "

GOD
WILL LIFT YOU UP IN HIS GOOD TIME

Talent
is God-given, so be humble. God's gifts are not on shelves one above
the other so that the taller you grow the easier you reach them. They
are on shelves one below the other so that by bending lower you get his
best. Jeremiah declares, "The Lord says, 'Wise men should not boast
of their wisdom, nor strong men of their strength, nor rich men of their
wealth. If anyone wants to boast, he should boast that he knows and understands
me" (Jeremiah 9:23-24). Paul asks, "Who made you to be superior
to others? Didn't God give you everything you have? Well, then, how can
you boast as if what you have were not a gift" (1 Corinthians 4:7)?

Fame
is man-given, so be grateful. Flattery is like perfume: it is meant
to be sniffed, not swallowed. It quickly becomes addictive. Pride enslaves
us to the opinions of others. What they think controls our lives.

Conceit
is self-given, so be careful. Remember the steamboat Abe Lincoln described:
it had a six foot boiler and a nine foot whistle. Every time the whistle
blew it took so much steam the engine stopped.

Remember
the frog who saw the ducks flying south for the winter. When he asked
them why, they said, "Because it is warmer there." He said,
"I'd like to do that too." So he found a stick and asked two
ducks to take each end in their mouth while he held on with his mouth
in the middle. It worked! Then as they flew over Caltech an engineering
student saw them and said, "That's amazing. I wonder who thought
of that." The frog answered, "I did!"

Pride
has two seasons: a forward spring and an early fall. "Pride goeth
before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs
16:18).

J.
D. Teague wrote this prayer: "I was a child playing hide and seek
with You. And You caught me hiding in the silliest, saddest places, behind
old grudges under a ton of disappointments, tangled in guilt, smothered
with success, choking on sobs that nobody heard. You found me and whispered
my name and said, 'You're it!' And I believe You meant it." (From
a wall in the House of Abba coffee house in Chula Vista.)

"Humble
yourself under the mighty hand of God and he will lift you up in his good
time."